Die For Me?
by Syn2
Summary: Angel faces the woman he loves.


Title: Die For Me?  
Author: Syn  
Rating: G  
Disclaimer: If they were mine, I'd be rolling in the he-bitches and man-ginas. hehehe..what an image.  
A/N: For some reason, I have a fascination with Vamp Cordy. I will purge this obsession one day. Or maybe not.  
  
**********  
  
Blood flowing, thick, metallic and familiar. It drip-dripped into his eyes and he blinked rapidly, brown orbs dilating in the darkness. His lips crackled, skin splitting beneath the rough velvet of his tongue as he slid it out past his bloody teeth. He winced as the roots of his hair ached from movement, the skin tingling with the memory of twisted, writhing handfuls. Nails as sharp as knives raking his flesh. He remembered it all and he wanted to forget. But he could never forget.   
  
Her perfume haunted him and he swallowed, a thick choking bitterness lodged in his throat. The hands he had imagined touching him, passionately and gently, had raked trails in his back. Even now, half-healed, the slashes burned like fire. He squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on the pain. The pain of living. The pain of knowing what he had to do. But what could he do? The rope was strong, tight and coiled around him like a snake. She made sure to make them tight. No chance of him getting away. Not when she still wanted to play. He had no doubt that she wanted to play with him more. Fear bloomed in his chest and he tried to slither out of the rough hemp, but the snake was too tight. He was trapped.   
  
He layed back against the chair, his head thrown back. Velvet black ceiling greeted his keen eyes and he wondered how far up it was. How far until the sky came crashing down? But the darkness didn't answer questions to a prisoner.   
  
Somehow, he slept. His body gave up on him and he fell into that darkness, encircled in its arms. Still, she came to him. He cried, ashamed of what he didn't do for her. Ashamed of what he couldn't do for her now. He let her down; he left her alone when he knew that vampire had been after him. When he came looking for Angel; he found her instead. He tried to tell her how sorry he was, but she smiled, ruby lips wide, hazel eyes flashing as she took him in her arms, wiping tears away with gentle thumbs. He sank into her warmth, shivering with the cold. Finally he was warm, but the skin beneath his palms was cold, corpse-like and pale.   
  
He looked up and she smiled an impossibly sharp smile at him, blood flowing from her tongue. Hard yellow eyes mocked him from the face he loved and he screamed, screamed, screamed. He woke with a start, her face hovering inches from his. The darkness was draped around her like a mantle and he thought she had never looked as lovely. Or as deadly. Looking down, he saw a stake in her hands, fingers wrapped gently around the rough wooden object. She smiled upon seeing him awaken, her tongue lolling out over lips painted bright red.   
  
"You're awake." She said in a tone he had once found so endearing on her. Now, he thought she was sick for talking in her bright, sunny way. She wasn't his sunshine any longer.   
  
"And what are planning on doing with that?" He said through tight lips. Her eyes lit up and she strattled his lap, the stake tucked between the two of them.   
  
"What do you want me to do with it?" She whispered, sliding her hand along the wood, from tip to blunt end. She bit her lip and he felt her grind a little on his lap. He surpressed a groan at her movement.   
  
"I want you to give it to me." He whispered back, trying the snake once more, but it only bit into his flesh further, a searing pain spreading through his numb hands.   
  
"Do you?" She said, leaning so close to his face that their cheeks brushed.   
  
"Yeah. So I can ram into your chest and watch you die." He said through gritted teeth. She drew back, a pout on her lips.   
  
"That's not nice. How can you be so mean to your Seer?" She said, clasping her hands around his neck, her head thrown back as she smiled into the vast, endless ceiling.   
  
"My Seer is dead. All I'm looking at is a vapid whore. You could never be her." He replied with venom in his voice.   
  
"But that's where you're wrong. I am her. I feel like her," She writhed on his lap and then bent to kiss his bruised lips, her cold tongue slipping into his mouth. "I taste like her. I want the same things she did." At those words she moved her hands to the sides of his face, looking him squarely in the eyes.   
  
"She never wanted me. She knew it was suicide for her and me."   
  
"Wrong again. I wanted you since I first met you. But that little cry-Buffy got to you first and you wouldn't even look at me. And then we met again and I wondered when you would look at me like you did at her. But one day I caught you staring at me. You looked so hungry. You looked lonely. You looked like Angelus. And I wanted you even more." She said, writhing again on his lap. He grimaced against the pleasure spreading across his body. No. This wasn't her. She was dead.   
  
"Cordelia. Stop." He burst out, afraid of where her movements would take him. He was afraid of himself. At the sound of her name, she stopped and tilted her head, short brown hair falling across her cheek artfully. A smile touched her lips.   
  
"Why?" The question was innocent and malicious at the same time and he wanted to scream. This wasn't her. She was dead. But she was staring at him right now, doing things to him that he had wished for, thought about and dreamed about every night as he lay alone. A morbid, insidious thought sprang into his head and he let it stay there. What if he just let her do what she wanted to him? What if he became Angelus for her? They could be together and he would finally have her. Wouldn't he?   
  
"I love you." Was all he could say through the lump in his throat.   
  
"Angel." She said, the softness he had loved coming to her face. For a split second he saw the girl she had been before a demon had entered her body. But it was a ghost of the woman. He looked up into her eyes and he was shocked by what he saw. The lightness in her eyes, the soul he could see whenever he looked at her was gone. She was blank where he needed her to be whole. The sick thoughts sputtered, died and lay quiet. No, he could never have her. Never. And he would not become Angelus again. Not even for her. He tested the snake again and its grip lessened. Hope blossomed in his chest, but the spark was small. She still had the stake.   
  
"Angel. I'm so lonely." The demon lied to him. He knew her too well to fall for her saccharine sweetness. "Please be with me."   
  
"Sorry love, I've got souls to save, places to go, people to see." He said in a brash tone. Her eyes narrowed.   
  
"Speaking of which, Wesley tastes funny. He stuck in my teeth." She said, hazel eyes glinting. Angel swallowed hard. What had she done? "What have I done, you ask?" She read his mind so well and he wanted to spit at her.   
  
"I was wondering that myself. Did you kill them? Did you break their necks and drink them dry? Did they scream for you? Did you enjoy it?" He said, his lips twisting in a morbid smile. Her grin widened and she nodded.   
  
"I always hated your little stories about the old days. But now I understand them. There's something about drinking someone and tasting everything that they are on your lips. There's power in them and knowledge and all the things I never knew that they had. Take Gunn for instance. He was a surprise. He cried. Called me by his sister's name. I was touched." She said, placing her hand over her silent heart. Angel swallowed hard.   
  
"How about Fred? Did she scream for you?"   
  
"Actually no. She just squeezed her eyes shut and said she was sorry she wasn't strong enough to kill me. But the girl was strong Angel. Stronger than I thought." Cordelia said, lifting her shirt to show him a ragged cut in her skin, just over her heart. "Nearly staked me. But little brainy Fred couldn't put the muscle behind it."   
  
"Way to go Fred." Angel said, his tone lighter than what he felt. Inside, he was flinging himself against the demon on his lap, tearing out her throat and watching her die. He tested the rope again and the snake uncoiled further.   
  
"Impressed by her, eh? She was nothing compared to Wesley." Cordelia said, eyes lighting up as she remembered the battle fondly. "He's a fighter, our little Watcher is. But, he landed nicely in the street, where I just had to go down after him. He couldn't even run, the poor guy. And he didn't like it when I started yanking on his broken legs. I guess it hurt." She shrugged and shook her head at the obviously fond memory.   
  
"I guess it did." Angel said, a deep growl escaping his lips. She smiled.   
  
"Making you mad, Angel dear?" Her eyebrows arched eloquently as she looked him over.   
  
"No." He spat out, wrenching his arms as the snake let go of him. The spark of hope flared up in his chest and he sprang forward, arms untwisted, the snake unravelling and falling to the floor with a muffled thud. Surprised, she found herself shoved uncerimoniously against the wall behind her.   
  
She laughed as he pressed his bruised body against hers. "What are going to do to me?"   
  
"What do you think?" He answered, looking one last time into her face before she changed into the demon. He changed as well, urged on by her transformation.   
  
"You wouldn't dare. Not me, your Cordelia. Your Seer? Your sunshine?" Amused, she laughed again, head thrown back as she smiled wide, teeth flashing dimly. Angel growled once more, teeth bared as he searched for the forgotten stake. It wasn't anywhere in his eyesight, but he knew it was still around. He hoped she wouldn't find it.   
  
"You're not Cordelia. And she was never mine."   
  
"I was always yours. You just had to say so." Again, the innocense in her voice beguiled him and he stopped, features softening into his human face once again. Could he do it? Could he kill her?   
  
He dropped his arms and stepped back half a pace. He couldn't do it. Not her.   
  
"Angel." She said, wrapping her arms around him and holding him close. He caressed her hair, smoothing it down with a loving hand. She shook in his arms and he bit his lip to keep tears from forming in his eyes.   
  
"Cordy? I'm so sorry." Was all he could choke out, his face buried in her hair. They held each other for moments, hours, weeks, years. Finally she pulled away from him, eyes glinting once more.   
  
"Angel?" She leaned in close, lips brushing his. "Could you..." Her voice trailed off and she wrapped her arms around him, melting into his embrace.   
  
And suddenly, Angel felt a sharp, hard, impossible lance of pain stab through his back. He gasped for air he didn't need and looked down into her face.   
  
"Die for me?" She said, kissing his lips once more.   
  
She felt air stirring against her lips and she peered out through her eyelashes as he exploded in a cloud of ash. The eyes she had loved so much dissolved before her, the subtle wind in the huge room stirring him, lifting him up, up, up into the lofty heights of the ceiling.   
  
"Poor Angel." Cordelia said, watching him float away, a smile stretched wide across her lips, her sharp teeth piercing her tongue. She drank away the blood that welled up and turned. She turned her back on Angel, on the life she had known, on the world she had been a part of.   
  
"Never try to kill a Seer. We always see it coming." And with that, she slammed the door of the Hyperion and walked off into the night.   
  
THE END. 


End file.
